BEIJING, March 27 /Xinhua-PRNewswire/ -- China's authoritative IT information research institute CCID Consulting (CCID) recently released its 2006-2007 research report on Chinese middleware market, showcasing that TongTech, the leading provider of Chinese middleware, continued to lead domestic middleware with its market share hitting 18.1% in 2006. Ranked third in Chinese middleware market following foreign rivals IBM and BEA, TongTech has strengthened its position as a member of the first-tier group, continuing to outperform other domestic middleware providers.
http://www.tongtech.com/images/saidishuju.jpg
(Data Source: CCID, Jan. 2007)
Mingled Hope and Fear in 2006
The brand structure of the Chinese middleware market in 2006 showed that the traditional leading middleware providers IBM, BEA and TongTech continued to lead the market with their total market share growing slightly from 2005 to 58.8%. As a result, the survival room of the second- and third-tier groups has been further encroached upon. It is made clear that the overall business turnaround is delicately connected with the service-oriented architecture (SOA). In 2006, the fact that middleware companies "catching the SOA bus" is an overwhelming tendency. Technically, middleware companies will look like near-sighted if they do not take SOA into account in the development of middleware products, and it will be quite difficult for them to catch up with leading companies. It will be of great importance for middleware companies to keep close watch on the technical development tendency of the middleware industry. Only when they follow these tendencies, improve their development capabilities and launch SOA-based products and solutions can they obtain the forward-looking core competitive edge amidst the increasingly fierce competition.
On the contrary, the performance of the second- and third-tier groups in the Chinese market is rather mediocre. Under the heavy pressure and increasing encroachment of the first-tier group, their general market share has taken on the tendency of growing slowly, or remaining at the same level, or even falling. Among them, the market share of Microsoft rose slightly while that of Sun was down 0.1%. Domestic middleware companies, such as Kingdee, CVIC and Primeton, posted a so-so performance. However, the poor performance of these companies in 2006 is far from being an occasional case. Microsoft and Oracle, software titans with their businesses covering operation system, application software, database and management software, are still not mature in the middleware market. Other companies, such as Sun, Kingdee and CVIC, face more challenges such as lack of local industrial experience, over-simplified products and mediocre market performance. Faced up with the powerful brand rallying point, complete product portfolio and aggressive market strategies of the first-tier group, they seem to have too many problems to cope with.
Who Gets on the SOA Bus?
Amidst the fierce competition in the middleware market in 2006, international giants, IBM and BEA, and the domestic company TongTech, had been quite active in fighting for the discoursing power in the SOA area, all aimed to win the priority in the upcoming SOA war.
Among these companies, IBM launched "Chinese University SOA Application Contest" as early as April 2006, the biggest-ever event held by IBM and Chinese universities. This event demonstrated IBM's great attention on and its ambition for the Chinese SOA market, and it got high praise from the industry. Following the event, IBM announced the establishment of a brand new and integrated IBM SOA Solution Center, a joint institute between IBM and Puna of India, in Beijing at the end of 2006. The center is designed to develop, manage and execute the industry-specific, SOA-based enterprise business solutions, helping users benefit from information technology at the maximum degree with SOA. Indeed, IBM is one of companies that have profited on SOA.
BEA, a recognized standard-bearer and leader of SOA trends by IDG Research (IDG), has been more radical in betting on SOA. All of a sudden, BEA announced the availability of SOA 360 degree at the end of 2006, transforming itself from a middleware company into a "SOA company". It incorporated three product lines into a unified SOA platform, and as a result, its three famous brands - Tuxedo, WebLogic and AquaLogic, have become history. Alfred S. Chuang, President and CEO of BEA, said, "With the industry-leading SOA platform and services, BEA has occupied an advantageous position that can make full use of the power of SOA."
TongTech, one of the top three in Chinese middleware market and the "explorer of Chinese SOA", continued its quest for a practical way for SOA application in the Chinese middleware industry in 2006. After it brought out the innovative BOA (business-oriented architecture) strategy and reduced the implementation risk of SOA in China, TongTech introduced TongIntegrator 3, an enterprise applications integrated product development platform that can meet SOA standards, becoming one of few companies that are capable of providing dual-layer solutions empowered by both traditional and the SOA solutions. In addition, TongTech held the "2006 Itinerary Lectures on Cutting-Edge Technologies of China Middleware and SOA" event in September and October It also launched China SOA Club ( http://www.soaclub.net ), the first one in China specializing in the research and exchange of SOA, thus speeding up the pace of cultivating and reserving SOA professionals, with a view to becoming more competent in the long-term competition with talent advantages.
For Wan Ningru, Deputy General Manager & Business Development Director of IDC, "Enterprise customers' needs of getting their business adapted to changes presses the IT system to become a living entity, being able to keep evolving in accordance with the changes of business environment and having features of soft expansion and supporting changes of business processes at any time. This is the very reason that has made the heat of competition in the SOA integration market remains at a high level." As an inevitable tendency of the middleware industry, the development of SOA calls for joint efforts of all middleware companies. Just as TongTech has been advocating, only when SOA is moved closer to users and able to meet users' needs better can it be applied on a large scale, and only at that time can SOA companies gain more profits in the middleware market.
What can E-Government Bring to Customers?
In the e-government area, international brands such as IBM and BEA can not develop business as much as domestic counterparts can do since customers in this sensitive area are prone to select domestic software that has independent intellectual property rights. The domesticization of the e-government has granted domestic middleware companies a golden development opportunity and an excellent, broad platform to perform themselves. Kingdee has a vast number of successful application cases, such as the application of its middleware products in Guangdong Provincial Industrial and Commercial Bureau and Nanning Municipal Government etc; CVIC's InforEAI-based E-government platform is a unique solution that can integrate Internet applications rapidly; Primeton's EOS middleware also posts active performance in the e-government area. Advantages of domestic middleware companies, such as the rich local industrial experience, high performance-price ratio and better services, will serve as a magic key for their success in the competitive middleware market.
The heated application of e-government is also the favorite for TongTech, since it is one of the biggest drive for TongTech's excellent market performance in 2006. TongTech's middleware platform, based on application development, information integration, application and service integration, and application and information security, effectively addressed the integration problem in the construction of e-government. Its "resources sharing and exchange platform", which received the "2006 Excellent Software Product Award" and "2006 The Best Middleware Product Award" successively, has won great favor from customers and been applied widely in the e-government area.
According to the investigation result of a survey conducted by CCW Research, "among domestic middleware software, users hold higher recognition for TongTech. As for TongTech products, what users are most satisfied with is the easy-to-use and security features. As the service aspect is concerned, the application training, pre-sale consulting and technical support are the very things that witness the highest satisfaction of users."
In conclusion, as the domestic middleware industry appeared to be a bit sluggish in 2006, the breakout of TongTech brought hope to the collective ice-breaking journey of the whole industry. Xu Zhidong, Deputy General Manager of TongTech, said, "TongTech has been ranked one of top three middleware providers along with IBM and BEA for many years in a row, demonstrating the powerful vitality and the broad market prospect of domestic software. Meanwhile, it is important to notice that, although the overall competitive edge of domestic software has been enhanced constantly, a considerable gap still remains between domestic brands and foreign ones. From now on, we should keep close watch on the industry trends; further improve our technologies and products. Coupled with advantages such as rich local industrial application experience, high performance-price ratio and better service, we expect to make a bigger breakthrough for the whole industry in our competition with foreign rivals in the near future."
